Chapter 4 CROSS-CUTTING ISSUES - UNDP

[Pages:10]Chapter 4

CROSS-CUTTING ISSUES

In addition to the core development results summarized in Chapter 3, the evaluation also considered how the UNDP programme in Rwanda is contributing to a number of cross-cutting issues. This section first describes the crosscutting issues of general concern for the GoR and its partners: aid coordination, institutional capacity development, gender mainstreaming and environment. Then it focuses on two other cross-cutting issues of particular concern for UNDP: the coherence and synergies achieved between UNDP's thematic programmes and between UNDP programmes and those of other UN organizations, and the effectiveness of UNDP M&E of its programmes.

UNDP Rwanda's results in these six crosscutting issues are mixed. The most impressive results have occurred in those areas where the GoR is also relatively strong: aid coordination and gender mainstreaming. Results in institutional capacity development, promoting the environment as a cross-cutting issue, M&E of UNDP support, and achieving coherence and synergies among UNDP and UN programmes have all been more mixed. Results in capacity development, environment and M&E are likely to improve in light of recent initiatives by the country office.

4.1 AID COORDINATION

UNDP's role in aid coordination in Rwanda reflects the frameworks of international and national aid that have emerged in recent years: the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, Ownership, Harmonisation, Alignment, Results and Mutual Accountability and the GoR's Aid Policy, which was adopted by the Cabinet in July 2006. The GoR's Aid Policy draws heavily on the international

process and is intended to ensure undisputable national leadership and a commonly approved agenda. Rwanda's comprehensive and practical Aid Coordination, Harmonization and Alignment Framework offers valuable lessons to the international development community.

UNDP support for aid coordination in Rwanda aims to contribute to the following development outcome of "Improved government capacity for leading the aid coordination, harmonization and alignment process for improved efficiency and poverty impact of aid." 54

UNDP contribution to aid coordination takes place mainly through the Resident Coordinator and the ACU. The Resident Coordinator is the co-chair of the Development Partners Coordination Group and the ACU supports the External Finance Unit of MINECOFIN.

4.1.1 AID COORDINATION UNIT

The ACU is managed by UNDP through a basket fund financed by DFID, Sweden, the Netherlands, UNDP, Canada, Switzerland and Belgium. Representatives from the basket fund contributors and the GoR form its steering committee. In 2008, the ACU's set-up as a separate unit will end and it will be integrated into UNDP's broader programme of support to MINECOFIN. An external evaluation of ACU is foreseen in 2007.

The ACU works in three areas. First, it functions as the secretariat for aid coordination and manages the aid coordination basket fund. Second, it assists the GoR in developing its capacity for aid coordination. Third, it develops tools for policy management.

54 UNDP Rwanda, `Annual Report 2005', Kigali, 2006.

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ACU's achievements include:

Support to the development of an aid coordination system in Rwanda

Strengthening the capacity of the External Finance Unit in managing the aid coordination process and mobilizing resources for the phasing out of the ACU by the end of 2007

Support to the creation of the Development Assistance Database

Support to the definition of the GoR Aid Policy

UNDP support to aid coordination has made significant contributions to national efforts to harmonize and coordinate aid flows in the country. The government and other development partners appreciate this and pointed out that the process builds trust and reinforces dialogue, supports national ownership and leadership, and provides clear rules and guidelines on delivering aid to the country. The UNDP contribution has been possible because the GoR and the development partners have promoted and respected the Aid Coordination, Harmonization and Alignment Framework. At the same time, UNDP and its ACU have contributed to the development and strengthening of the framework.

Three strategic factors stand out. First, much effort has been invested in building trust, which has been reinforced through dialogue and forums. Second, the importance of government ownership and leadership has been understood and supported by all parties. Third, clear rules have been established. The Budget Support Group first prepared explicit partnership principles and now they are defined in the GoR Aid Policy

Paradoxically, UNDP Rwanda's strength in aid coordination entails challenges for the country office. While the UNDP caters to the Aid Coordination, Harmonization and Alignment process, it has had difficulties in aligning its own operations. The `One UN' reform pilot in Rwanda and the alignment of UNDAF with national strategies should provide an opportunity to tackle issues such as:

UNDP data initially submitted ranked low in the data quality assessment of the Development Assistance Database (it has been improving recently).

A large proportion of UNDP funded projects still have their own parallel project implementation units.

The predictability of UNDP funding could be improved.

In many cases, UN organizations require their own reporting format.

Coordination of development assistance is a promising focal area in the UNDP portfolio. This is recognized in the country office paper on UNDP Rwanda Strategic Positioning.55 Building aid coordination capacity will be a critical step. It will also be critical for UNDP to institutionalize the key lessons that have emerged from its most successful coordination experiences in Rwanda, including the need to help the national government own their own coordination functions by establishing:

A sustainable dialogue process

Effective and practical tools to operate and monitor the coordination process

A robust negotiation capacity within the coordination unit

UNDP has also contributed to aid coordination at the cluster level. It co-chairs three sector groups: Justice, Environment and Land Use Management, and Capacity Building and Public Sector Reform.

Aid coordination activities will need to be careful not to lose sight of the fact that, by definition, aid coordination capacity should be strengthened principally within the government, not in a development partner agency.

55 UNDP Rwanda, `UNDP Rwanda Strategic Positioning', Undated.

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The aid coordination, harmonization and alignment process is particularly strong in Rwanda due to strong government leadership, government development policies that development partners consider credible, clear GoR Aid Policy, coordination of the process by MINECOFIN and the effective work of the ACU, as well as the limited number of development partners and good consensus among them in the Rwandan context.

Almost all development partners recognize that UNDP and ACU have played instrumental roles in donor coordination. UNDP's role stems from the situation in the 1990s when most development partners did not have representation or significant delivery capacity in Rwanda and thus channelled their contributions through the UNDP. Other contributing factors are UNDP's perceived neutrality and its capacity to provide short-term expertise in a wide range of areas. UNDP also occupies a trusted position in coordinating between the government and its development partners.

An assessment of factors influencing the attainment of the UNDP expected outcomes in aid coordination is presented in Annex E. UNDP support in this area has been highly effective and aid coordination, alignment and harmonization in Rwanda might not have progressed to their current level without UNDP involvement. UNDP's contribution to aid coordination demonstrates that significant effects do not necessarily depend on voluminous funding, but on skill and understanding of the context combined with a vision, commitment and adequate expertise.

4.2 INSTITUTIONAL CAPACITY DEVELOPMENT

4.2.1 RWANDA'S PRIORITIES FOR INSTITUTIONAL CAPACITY DEVELOPMENT

As in many countries of sub-Saharan Africa, capacity development is a key requirement across virtually all sectors in Rwanda. The civil war and genocide of the 1990s left the country with vast gaps in human and institutional capacity. Capacity needs remain significant as the government embarks on the implementation of ambitious policies, including decentralization.

Rwanda's labour market is very fluid and well trained professionals are highly mobile. Many young graduates assume important positions with little relevant experience. Government agencies are constantly at risk of losing trained people to international organizations and NGOs. This situation underlines the importance and the challenges of institutional capacity development, and the need for coherent strategies for capacity development at the institutional and national levels. Rwanda is planning to develop a comprehensive capacity development strategy, discussed below.

With the new decentralization policy in force in Rwanda, there is a clear delineation of responsibilities: policies and overall direction are defined by the central government, the five provincial governments are responsible for coordinating activities within their jurisdictions, and the 30 district level governments are responsible for leading implementation of governmental activities at the local level. This leaves local governments with massive capacity development needs, such as the need to build capacities to implement local environmental and resource management programmes in collaboration with the productive and infrastructure sectors.

Another critical need at all levels of GoR is for more effective M&E of results. All three levels of the government need to develop capacity to lead and participate fully in continuous monitoring and joint evaluation exercises. This is needed especially to minimize the danger of `donor dominated' approaches to M&E.

4.2.2 UNDP SUPPORT TO INSTITUTIONAL CAPACITY DEVELOPMENT

Many UNDP contributions to developing the capacities of government partners were cited during the evaluation, but there is no systematic approach to capacity development or to measuring progress towards well defined capacity development objectives. This issue was raised repeatedly in the project evaluations carried out by UNDP Rwanda between 2000 and 2006. It makes it impossible to rigorously verify UNDP's capacity development contributions.

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Many UNDP projects have made or are making contributions to institutional capacity development, but these are very weakly measured. Contributions include early support for the development of the Kigali Institute of Science and Technology, ongoing support to development of MINECOFIN's aid coordination capacity, and training programmes including training of Gacaca judges, high court judges and parliamentarians. UNDP has also supported defining policy for developing decentralized environmental management capacities in the western province through the Decentralized Environmental Management Project.

But UNDP Rwanda has no explicit capacity development strategy, other than its recent support for the government's incipient strategy. It also does not have any formal system for measuring short or medium term GoR and/or UNDP Rwanda capacity development results. The country office has now outlined a preliminary strategy for capacity building that defines principles and lists activities, but it still lacks key elements of a strategy, such as objectives, expected outcomes, resources and a timeframe.

Some capacity development activities earlier in the evaluation period, such as salary supplements for MINECOFIN staff, stretch the definition of institutional capacity development, particularly when they are not situated within a coherent institutional capacity development framework. More recent capacity development with MINECOFIN is being closely tied to specific tasks and on-the-job training with occasional short-term formal training events. Yet there is still no systematic focus on capacity development and no systematic approach to retaining capacities that are developed.

expressed concern that UNDP Rwanda's actions belie its rhetoric. Despite its discourse about capacity development as a country-led process, some partners find UNDP Rwanda still has a supply driven approach to capacity development.

The most promising development has been UNDP Rwanda's recent decision to support the GoR in developing a `National Integrated Skills Development Policy' and a national capacity development strategy that will be closely linked to the EDPRS currently being prepared.

This more systematic approach to capacity development should allow the government to achieve greater synergies among its capacity development initiatives by sharing and coordinating facilities, approaches and so on in diverse areas such as decentralized resource and environmental management, health and education services. A more systematic approach could also help the government better foresee and minimize the disruption to its capacities wrought by other emerging policies.

4.3 GENDER MAINSTREAMING

The GoR has demonstrated exceptional commitment to gender promotion and equality--women have been promoted to positions of visibility and responsibility at all levels. This commitment has been incorporated into the Constitution, the Rwanda Vision 2020 strategy, the PRSP and other government plans, which clearly stipulate that ensuring gender equality and women's political, social and economic empowerment is an overarching national concern and that discrepancies in gender equality should be addressed by all actors in society at all levels.

While some projects, the PEI for example, pair national consultants with international consultants to develop the formers' capacities, this is not done systematically by UNDP Rwanda. Other projects, such as the current programme of support to MINICOM, still hire large numbers of international consultants who work alone. Some capacity development institutions in Rwanda

A law that eliminates gender discrimination on inheritance rights was promulgated in late 1999. In 2000, the cabinet adopted a five-year gender action plan, the Comprehensive Action Plan for the Elimination of All Discrimination Against Women. Women's political representation has increased significantly, most notably in the Parliament where 48 percent of the current

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representatives are women. Seats are also reserved for elected women representatives in local councils and their executive committees.

Rwandan national authorities actively promote women, including through the institution of the Ministry of Gender and Family Promotion, which is mandated to spearhead the elimination of gender imbalances in all sectors. In addition, local chapters of the National Women's Council are operational.

The government sees gender equality as a crosscutting issue. Therefore gender is being mainstreamed into the current EDPRS, and checklists have been developed to ensure this.

The GoR also considers gender-based violence (GBV) to be a hindrance to development and a bill on GBV has now been passed through Parliament. To ensure implementation of measures to reduce GBV, a strong partnership has been developed with law enforcement agencies. The police force has established GBV desks at all levels in the country to record reports on GBV and take necessary action.

In education, the gender gap is rapidly narrowing, especially in primary and secondary education. In combating HIV/AIDS, attention is being given to women to stop mother-to-child transmission, to promote anti-retroviral treatment and to promote income generation activities.

Despite these notable achievements, gender gaps remain in Rwanda, especially in the rural areas. The Human Development Report 2005 ranked Rwanda 122 out of 140 countries in the genderrelated development index. Female-earned income amounts to 62 percent of male-earned income.

4.3.1 UNDP SUPPORT TO GENDER MAINSTREAMING

UNDP is committed to promoting gender equality in Rwanda, spending roughly $500,000 annually on gender-related activities. UNDP resources are committed through different units to fund various activities. For example, support to

women parliamentarians was channelled through the governance programme in the country office, which supported capacity building including computer training. UNDP also donated a substantial amount of money for the global conference on Gender, Nation Building and the Role of Parliaments that took place February 2007 in Kigali.

Some UNDP Rwanda projects are run in partnership with UNIFEM, for example, UNDP funded the project `Enhancing Protection from Gender Based Violence and Strengthening Capacity in the Ministry of Gender' that was implemented by UNIFEM.

UNDP is also playing a key role in the gender team that has been tasked with mainstreaming gender issues into the EDPRS.

UNDP joined an on-going initiative to audit several international bilateral and multilateral organizations on gender. The objective of the Gender Audit Project is to put in place a mechanism for on-going benchmarking and peer review of organizational behaviour that will contribute to improved gender equality in Rwanda. It also aims to develop a self-assessment methodology that will enable organizations to identify good practices and areas of improvement that will form the basis for an action plan for improved performance on gender equality.

Key UNDP contributions to Rwanda's gender results have included:

Support to women parliamentarians that boosted their self-esteem--Rwanda's women law makers now feel they are on equal footing with their male counterparts.

Provision of computers that have added to women parliamentarians' knowledge and efficiency and improved their networking on issues of shared vision across the world.

Support for giving Rwandan women a `voice' on the issue of GBV, including a partnership with the police force and a clear message that GBV will not be tolerated.

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Support to the National Commission for Elections for civic education to women to help them participate during local elections. This has resulted in an increase in numbers of women elected at national levels.

The challenge of protecting women and children from human rights violations still exists.

While gender-specific projects have been undertaken, there is little direct evidence that gender issues and their impact on project beneficiaries are systematically taken into account in UNDP supported projects. One example is the resettlement of internally displaced persons in Gisenyi, where gender concerns were not mainstreamed in the project. This also occurred in an HIV/AIDS project in Butare, where women were excluded. Stakeholders have expressed the view that gender is an incidental concern and a specific gender focus was limited to only certain UNDP supported projects. It is hoped that the gender audit will enable UNDP to correct this anomaly.

Today, the GoR is committed to addressing environmental challenges, both from the perspective of a sector (see section 3.6) and as a cross-cutting issue. In the second generation PRS, the EDPRS, environment will appear both as a sector and as a cross-cutting issue.

4.4.2 UNDP CONTRIBUTIONS TO ADDRESSING ENVIRONMENT AS A CROSS-CUTTING ISSUE

The principal UNDP initiative has been PEI's recent reviews of key sectors' logical framework analyses for the EDPRS. This kind of systematic analysis of environmental issues in key socioeconomic sectors was not done for the first PRSP. The PEI has now provided environmental input into the frameworks being developed for EDPRS in agriculture, health, water and sanitation, justice, private-sector development, social protection, environment, gender, social protection and HIV/AIDS. This cross-sectoral analysis offers important guidance for orienting these sectors, though it is too early to assess the development results of this work.

4.4 ENVIRONMENT AS A CROSS-CUTTING ISSUE

4.4.1 RWANDA'S PRIORITIES IN ADDRESSING ENVIRONMENT AS A CROSS-CUTTING ISSUE

Treating environment as a cross-cutting theme was not a successful approach during the implementation of Rwanda's first PRS. The plan had been to explicitly address environment as a cross-cutting theme and integrate principles of sound environmental management into the policies of key sectors such as agriculture, industry and infrastructure. This did not meet expectations, as noted in the final evaluation of the PRS: "Environmental considerations have yet to be integrated systematically across different areas of government policy, and the linkages between environment and land use policies and the reduction of poverty have been insufficiently analyzed."56

A critical capacity weakness identified during the PEI is the lack of awareness of environmental challenges among Rwandan sectoral specialists and analysts. Examples include highly trained development economists who have little or no notion of the environmental consequences and challenges associated with different economic activities such as agricultural intensification and irrigation, highway and dam construction, and so on. Understanding of the fundamental environmental challenges facing the country tends to be better developed at decentralized levels.

For PEI's analytic work to have the desired results, government decision makers will need to commit to making decisions based on the PEI analysis. Yet the work of the PEI in support of the EDPRS process is challenged by the limited buy-in to the process from technical specialists in other sectors in the government. This constraint

56 UNDP, `Evaluation of Poverty Reduction Strategy Implementation and Aid Coordination ( July 2005)', Kigali, Rwanda, 2005.

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is illustrated, for example, by PEI's difficulties in obtaining GoR's information on budgets allocated to environmental management activities in the different sectors. This example illustrates why UNDP Rwanda will need a far stronger voice on environment issues if the office is to retain environment as one of its two principal areas of programming.

4.5 COHERENCE AND SYNERGIES AMONG UNDP AND UN PROGRAMMES

4.5.1 COHERENCE AND SYNERGIES AMONG UNDP PROGRAMMES

The greatest coherence among the five UNDP programming areas, where there appears to be the frequent interaction and active collaboration needed to achieve real synergies, is among those units working on different dimensions of governance. Activities of the Governance Unit; Strategic Planning and Economic Management Unit; the Justice, HIV-AIDS and Gender Unit; and the ACU converge synergistically, for example, in support to decentralization. The Justice, HIVAIDS and Gender Unit's gender strategy is also expected to enhance the activities of the other units.

The Sustainable Livelihoods Unit has had less success in achieving coherence and synergies with the other units. This is a drawback for a group that aims to help the GoR promote environment as a cross-cutting dimension of all development activities. The relative isolation of the Sustainable Livelihoods Unit was illustrated by their inability to participate fully in economic analysis related to the `Millennium Project', despite the extensive environmental economic analysis being carried out under the auspices of the PEI. This situation may have been due in part to human resource constraints, which again highlights the need for the country office to strengthen this unit if environment is to be one of UNDP Rwanda's two principal areas of focus in the next programming period.

Greater synergies could be achieved among all the programming groups if they shared more well defined and rigorous approaches to capacity

development and to M&E. This would allow these units to contribute jointly, for example, to achieving capacity development targets set with the GoR, then to measure progress towards these targets through shared M&E systems and to share lessons emerging from these processes.

4.5.2 COHERENCE AND SYNERGIES BETWEEN UNDP AND OTHER UN ORGANIZATIONS

Collaboration between UNDP and other UN systems are ensured by the Resident Coordinator, who is also the UNDP Resident Representative. Within the framework of the UNDAF, the UN country team (UNCT) outline their strategies to ensure complementarities and avoid duplication. Collaboration within the UNCT is achieved through:

Regular Heads of Agencies' meetings

A Rwanda UNDAF task force established to draw up all UNDAF Strategic Outputs, coordinate efforts at the level of projects and programmes, and promote joint programming

The UNCT initiated the preparation of the new UNDAF to cover the period 2008-2012 during a three-day UNDAF Strategic Prioritization Retreat in December 2006. It was decided that the elaboration of the new UNDAF would be suspended for a year to allow the completion of Rwanda's EDPRS in order to ensure a high degree of coherence between the UNCT's programmes and the government's development agenda.

Economic management: UNDP works in partnership with the other UN organizations to support the government in improving economic governance. In the second CCF for Rwanda, UNDP supported the government's economic and financial management structures in collaboration with UNICEF, UNFPA, the UN Economic Commission for Africa and UNESCO.

Environment: The PEI is the UNDP's and UNEP's joint initiative to support the government's efforts to mainstream environmental management in the EDPRS. This initiative has been a valuable source of lessons that should be of value in the emerging One UN pilot in Rwanda, discussed in section 5.3.

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HIV/AIDS: In combating HIV/AIDS, UNDP collaborated with UNAIDS, UNICEF, WHO, UNFPA, UNECA, UNHCR, and WFP. While UNDP played a valuable role in resource mobilization and coordination of HIV/AIDS activities, many observers believed it should have taken a back seat in actual implementation and allowed UNAIDS, UNICEF, UNFPA, WHO, and WFP to play more visible roles.

Population data is being collected by UNDP, funded by DFID. UNFPA feels that this is their mandate and UNFPA should be conducting the data collection. DFID reiterated the same concern. Here again, UNDP needs to more clearly explain their comparative advantage in this area vis-?-vis other UN organizations.

Gender: UNDP collaborated closely with UNIFEM, who reports that without the strong relationship that exists between UNIFEM and the UNDP country office, little would have been achieved in the promotion of gender equality and equality. Together, they delivered impressive results during the second Country Cooperation Framework-- from support to widows of war and genocide to capacity development for women parliamentarians (see details in section 4.3).

Justice and human rights: UNDP collaborates with UNHCR, UNHRC, UNICEF, and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda to support MINIJUST, bringing together all actors in the areas of justice, human rights, and law and harmonizing their efforts. These projects were conceived as part of Good Governance for Poverty Reduction Programme. There is wide recognition by various stakeholders that valuable synergies have been achieved in this programme.

Concerns of UN organizations: Various UN organizations expressed concerns that UNDP overshadows other UN organizations even when it collaborates with them, getting involved in areas where it does not have the capacity or expertise, such as demographic data collection (part of the UNFPA mandate). Coherence and synergies among UNDP and the rest of the UNCT should be enhanced through the One

UN reform pilot to be carried out in Rwanda (discussed in section 5.3).

Coherence and synergies between UNDP and Rwandan civil society: While UNDP has impressive partnerships with the government, bilateral and multilateral agencies, and UNCT, UNDP could do far more to build partnerships and explore possible synergies with Rwandan NGOs and civil society organizations. This is especially true at the decentralized level, where these kinds of partners could usefully play a more active role in the delivery of social programmes, for example.

4.6 MONITORING AND EVALUATION OF UNDP PROGRAMMES

The discussion on strategic positioning of UNDP Rwanda (section 5) emphasizes the role of performance monitoring. Systematic and rational guidance of UNDP Rwanda's wide-ranging programme portfolio calls for an objective system for measuring outcomes and the factors contributing to and limiting them. Weaknesses in the area of M&E diminish UNDP capacity in partnerships with the GoR and the development partners. The EDPRS process further underlines the importance of this issue. This new PRS will require performance monitoring by each sector group using a limited set of shared performance indicators.

Currently, the UNDP country office does not have a comprehensive, operational performance monitoring system. The existing Monitoring Framework for UNDP Rwanda outlines responsibilities as well as tools and methods at activity, project, sector, and country office levels, but this framework is not fully operational. A country office memo on the subject states that "monitoring tools are currently available but misunderstandings of their application and use are resulting in work duplication and inefficiency."

One example of non-operational performance monitoring is a self-evaluation of the Programme Results 2005 that assessed achievements related to six `drivers': developing national capacities,

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